Online Feature

Epilepsy in a dish: Stem cell research reveals clues to disease's origins and possible treatment

U-M-led study of neurons created from skin of patients with Dravet syndrome

A new stem cell-based approach to studying epilepsy has yielded a surprising discovery about what causes one form of the disease, and may help in the search for better medicines to treat all kinds of seizure disorders.

The findings, reported by a team of scientists from the University of Michigan Medical School and colleagues, use a technique that could be called "epilepsy in a dish".

A feast and fast sequence explains how large galaxies can keep their mass down.

Unlike humans, galaxies don't have an obesity problem. In fact there are far fewer galaxies at the most massive end of the galactic scale than expected and scientists have long sought to explain why. A new University of Maryland-led study published in the journal Nature suggests that one answer lies in a kind of feast and fast sequence through which large galaxies can keep their mass down.

Pre-natal mercury exposure from fish consumption eliminated as cause of later autism-like behaviours.

The potential impact of exposure to low levels of mercury on the developing brain – specifically by women consuming fish during pregnancy – has long been the source of concern and some have argued that the chemical may be responsible for behavioral disorders such as autism. However, a new study that draws upon more than 30 years of research in the Republic of Seychelles reports that there is no association between pre-natal mercury exposure and autism-like behaviors.

Discovery may explain how anti-inflammatory steroid drugs work, leading to entirely new classes of anti-inflammatory treatments without some of the side effect of steroids.

A gene long presumed dead comes to life under the full moon of inflammation, Stanford University School of Medicine scientists have found.

The discovery, described in a study to be published July 23 in eLife, may help explain how anti-inflammatory steroid drugs work. It also could someday lead to entirely new classes of anti-inflammatory treatments without some of steroids' damaging side effects.

Researchers have measured how the brain behaves in "hypersexual" people who have problems regulating their viewing of sexual images.

Controversy exists over what some mental health experts call "hypersexuality," or sexual "addiction." Namely, is it a mental disorder at all, or something else? It failed to make the cut in the recently updated Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-5, considered the bible for diagnosing mental disorders. Yet sex addiction has been blamed for ruining relationships, lives and careers.

The development of new drugs for improving treatment of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease is a step closer after recent research into how stem cells migrate and form circuits in the brain.

The results from a study by researchers at The University of Auckland’s Centre for Brain Research may hold important clues into why there is less plasticity in brains affected by Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease, and links to insulin resistance and diabetes.

The major five-year project to understand how stem cells start and stop migrating in the brain has also helped to unlock the secrets of how stem cells migrate during development and in adulthood.

How did dinosaurs mate and what evidence do we have to reconstruct their sex lives?

Dinosaurs were the largest animals to ever walk Earth, and they ruled the planet for more than 160 million years. The long-necked Argentinosaurus, with back vertebrae almost two metres high, possibly grew to 30 metres long and weighed up to 80 tonnes. So did the earth really shake for them when they mated?

The real question here though is: how did they really mate and what evidence do we have to reconstruct their sex lives?